https://vegasharmon.com/tags/virtues-and-vices/ Recent content in Virtues-and-Vices on Vegas Harmon Hugo en Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-inner-ring-chasing-it-guarantees-you-ll-never-belong/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-inner-ring-chasing-it-guarantees-you-ll-never-belong/ That is my first reason. Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things. My second reason is this. The torture allotted to the Danaids in the classical underworld, that of attempting to fill sieves with water, is the symbol not of one vice, but of all vices. It is the very mark of a perverse desire that it seeks what is not to be had. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/consumer-debt-as-discipline/ Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/consumer-debt-as-discipline/ Adopting Ford’s methods, the industry would soon be reduced to the Big Three. So workers eventually became habituated to the abstraction of the assembly line. Evidently, it inspires revulsion only if one is acquainted with more satisfying modes of work. Here the concept of wages as compensation achieves its fullest meaning, and its central place in modern economy. Changing attitudes toward consumption seemed to play a role. A man whose needs are limited will find the least noxious livelihood and work in a subsistence mode, and indeed the experience of early (eighteenth-century) capitalism, when many producers worked at home on a piece-rate basis, was that only so much labor could be extracted from them. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/gin-and-secrets-and-sex/ Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/gin-and-secrets-and-sex/ The author contrasts the privileged lifestyle of the Cambridge spies with the brutality that Stalin meted out to his victims. For the spies, she says, the war was ‘not so bad. Not when they had gin and secrets and sex. And bread.’ More than once she describes the spies as part of a ‘chapocracy’: an establishment whose complacency and incompetence protected spies who dined and drank in the same clubs and were part of the same social network. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-grumbler-or-only-a-grumble/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-grumbler-or-only-a-grumble/ The question is whether she is a grumbler, or only a grumble. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-stronger-angel-a-fiercer-devil/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-stronger-angel-a-fiercer-devil/ It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/brass-is-mistaken-for-gold/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/brass-is-mistaken-for-gold/ There’s something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there’s also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/cruel-because-he-is-pathetic/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/cruel-because-he-is-pathetic/ I hate how sad Poo is. I can’t stand how poor and pathetic he is, and because of that I am cruel to him. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/darkness-cannot-infect-our-light/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/darkness-cannot-infect-our-light/ Did you think joy was created to live always under that threat? Always defenseless against those who would rather be miserable than have their self-will crossed? For it was real misery. I know that now. You made yourself really wretched. That you can still do. But you can no longer communicate your wretchedness. Everything becomes more and more itself. Here is joy that cannot be shaken. Our light can swallow up your darkness: but your darkness cannot now infect our light. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/encouragement-speaks-fruitfully/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/encouragement-speaks-fruitfully/ Encouragement is speaking fruitfully into the life of another. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/hell-as-endless-quarrelling/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/hell-as-endless-quarrelling/ ‘Not at all,’ said my neighbor. ‘The trouble is that they’re so quarrelsome. As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he’s been there twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbour. Before the week is over he’s quarrelled so badly that he decides to move. Very likely he finds the next street empty because all the people there have quarrelled with their neighbors—and moved. If so he settles in. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/humility-is-thinking-of-yourself-less/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/humility-is-thinking-of-yourself-less/ Humility is thinking of yourself less, not thinking less of yourself. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/inability-does-not-erase-obligation/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/inability-does-not-erase-obligation/ Our complete inability to do what is right does not erase our obligation to do what is right. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/love-as-the-craving-to-be-loved/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/love-as-the-craving-to-be-loved/ But what we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/resolve-as-a-prior-moral-decision/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/resolve-as-a-prior-moral-decision/ [Resolve is] the action of making a moral decision prior to the circumstances in which it is applied. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/seeking-recognition-and-appreciation/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/seeking-recognition-and-appreciation/ He felt quite certain that he was going where, at last, his finely critical spirit would no longer be outraged by an uncongenial environment—where he would find ‘Recognition’ and ‘Appreciation.’ https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/some-rise-by-sin/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/some-rise-by-sin/ Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/teach-me-how-to-repent/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/teach-me-how-to-repent/ Teach me how to repent; for that’s as good As if thou hadst sealed my pardon, with thy blood. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-critic-left-with-only-self-conceit/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-critic-left-with-only-self-conceit/ But he was at least intelligent: one could get some criticism worth hearing from him, even if he was a failure on the creative side. But now he seems to have nothing left but his self-conceit. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-grumble-going-on-like-a-machine/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/the-grumble-going-on-like-a-machine/ Then there will be no you left to criticise the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/to-be-in-a-passion/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/to-be-in-a-passion/ To be in a Passion you Good may do But no Good if a Passion is in you. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/who-dotes-yet-doubts/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/who-dotes-yet-doubts/ But O, what damned minutes tells he o’er Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves.